Dear Reader:

Have you ever gotten in a shouting match with a spouse, friend, parent, child, or someone else who you felt “Did you wrong?” I rarely find myself in shouting matches since I have such an abhorrence to them…but even as an arrogant teenager, on occasion, I spewed my tirade of the injustices inflicted on the young by (my youthful perception) overbearing adult (s) who just didn’t get it? (I don’t think I even knew what “it” was but I felt like I wasn’t getting “it” anyway!)

Somehow I believe, I intuitively, knew that this heated argument was a “lose, lose” experiment in crossing boundaries. Feelings were going to get hurt, guilt was going to enter through the cracks, and words, once spoken, were going to remain in another’s memory for a long time. Still the worse outcome would be the strange ‘distance’ between you and the friend who argued. A ‘distance’ not easily erased, no matter the physical proximity of both participants.

This anecdote ‘fit the bill’ for showing me again how listening to another’s view-point, before blindly lashing out in anger, can save relationships of importance.

“Why We Shout When In Anger”

A young minister, who was picnicking with his family, along a local river bank, discovered a group of family members on the banks, shouting in anger at each other. His eight-year-old son turned to his daddy and asked?

‘Why do people shout at each other when they get mad?’

The pastor thought for a minute and then replied: ‘Because we lose our calm, we shout.’

“But daddy, the little boy, still looking puzzled, continued, “Mad people don’t have to shout to be heard…those people, over there, are standing real close to each other…can’t they just talk?”

The pastor stared at his young son and knew his response was important and would probably remain with him for a long time. He took several minutes to ponder the question before finally replying.

“When two people are angry at each other, their hearts distance a lot. To cover that distance they must shout to be able to hear each other. The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to shout to hear each other to cover that great distance that has grown up between them.” 

As the little boy thought about what his daddy had just said, the pastor grabbed his wife around the waist pulling her closer to him and giving her a sweet kiss. As his young son giggled…he concluded:

“What happens when two people fall in love? They don’t shout at each other but talk softly, because their hearts are very close. The distance between them is either nonexistent or very small… When they love each other even more, what happens? They do not speak, they now only whisper, and they get even closer to each other in their love.”

Finally they even need not whisper, they only look at each other and that’s all. That is how close two people are when they love each other.’ And with one accord…the pastor and his wife went over and swooped up their little boy in their arms….swinging him back and forth. The pastor finished the response with one last warning:

“So when you argue, my little one, do not let your heart get distant, Do not say words that distance each other more, or else there will come a day when the distance is too great and you can no longer find the path to return.”

………………………………………

So until tomorrow…Let’s remember to raise words, not voices, while angry. There are no brownie points given for the one who shouts the loudest…in fact, in the end, the only dessert given to the loudest is probably called “Just Desserts.”

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*After having a marvelous time “hanging” with the students at Primrose Pre-School Thursday, I spent the night at John and Mandy’s house so I would be there bright and early for a leadership program Eva Cate was participating in…She got to introduce the first grade skit about the famous artist Jonathan Greene.

***I think I am going to have to break down and call Izzy, my former student and computer wizard, to come see what is wrong with my desk computer. If you haven’t heard from me as regularly as usual, or in earnest asked to “befriend me” on Facebook or have noticed the giant pictures in the posts… if you subscribe (Facebook readers have pictures more in proportion)… now you know why.

I woke up one day last week, checked the post, and then turned on Outlook…my email…and there was an ugly looking red mark across the page saying it had been tampered with but Google Chrome had recognized the problem and closed it without any damage….it would re-open again. But to date it hasn’t.

I can still check my email on my IPhone but it is tedious at best and now the only way I can insert personal photos is through this rather complicated procedure (using my IPhone) which doesn’t control the size of the picture on my desk top computer…thus the really big pictures in the daily blog of subscribers.

I thought I could wait it out…but with each day’s passing this problem looks like it isn’t going to correct itself without some other help. In the meantime I hope that you are, at least, still getting the post….(subscribers and Facebook readers alike) and hopefully this computer glitch will pass. One can only pray and hope!